HistoriaSG:

Museums in Southeast Asia: A Brief Cultural History

This talk explores the idea of the museum as a repository of knowledge and tool of nation-building in its global diffusion from Europe to the rest of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. The museum’s various typologies (art, history, natural museum) and statuses (national, colonial, postcolonial) are reviewed in relation to Singapore’s history and the museum boom of the past decade.

About the Speaker

Maurizio Peleggi is Professor of Cultural History at the National University of Singapore. He has published widely on the cultural history of Thailand as well as on Southeast Asia’s built heritage. His latest book by the University of Hawaii Press, Monastery, Monument, Museum: Sites and Artifacts of Thai Cultural Memory, will be out this month.

This edition of HistoriaSG is produced in collaboration with the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore.

About HistoriaSG

HistoriaSG is a lecture series that focuses on important but lesser-known aspects of Singapore’s history. With in-depth presentations by local and international academics on a range of topics viewed through a variety of lens from business to science and technology, the environment and specific communities, the series sheds new light on Singapore’s culture, history and heritage. Organised by the National Museum of Singapore, HistoriaSG is part of the museum’s efforts to promote a deeper understanding and appreciation of Singapore’s history.

This lecture will be recorded for educational purposes.

Image above: Former Raffles Library and Museum (today the National Museum of Singapore), image courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore.